Contagion

Synopsis

Nothing spreads like fear

As an epidemic of a lethal airborne virus - that kills within days - rapidly grows, the worldwide medical community races to find a cure and control the panic that spreads faster than the virus itself.

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I love Steven Soderbergh. His proportion of masterpieces to films which are simply good might not be the best, but he has a cinematic vocabulary which is entertaining almost without exception, and this mastery is especially evident in Contagion.

One of the things I most admire him for is that he will never use dialogue where the camera can do the explaining. There are a multitude of shots here which simply serve to communicate how a disease like this spreads: focuses on door handles and on a grocery store customer coughing into the air do more than a lot of wordy exposition. He also has a penchant for montages with such wonderfully clear progression and purpose. It might sound simple,…

The fact something like this could actually happen made me feel a bit uneasy. I'm not the type of person who worries about germs or constantly washer their hands, but as I said this could happen and director Steven Soderbergh does a an excellent job of giving this film that too real feel. It adds to the atmosphere and is bound to make anyone who does worry about these type of things a nervous wreck.

The cast is excellent and their performances felt very natural in their reactions to a situation like this. I don't think it's unfair to say that in the event of a contagion like this governments would try to cover it up and there would be…

This was my second viewing of Contagion, so I knew exactly what was coming. Also, keep in mind that I am not someone that freaks out over potential epidemics, as I currently find it amusing watching us Americans panic over two people out of 350 million contracting Ebola, while the fact that thousands are dying from it in West Africa isn't even as compelling as what a celebrity was wearing at the beach yesterday.

I have washed my hands probably 8 times since the film ended 8 hours ago.

The first ten minutes of Contagion are some of the greatest minutes Soderbergh has ever shot - it's the abrupt structure of the opening monologues and elisions between moments on the clock: Soderbergh continues to build cross-location scenes that interact with each other across unspecified periods of time. These elisions are tied via match-cuts but also shifts from hard focus to shallow focus... Matt Damon's earth-shattering opening scene includes some of the most insane establishing images I am familiar with. It's not just the ostensibly flashy introductory montage but the obstructed views of Damon in passenger seats, the transitory moments overseas that become displays of pure expression and symbols in the wake of actual inanimate color echoing Soderbergh's earlier experiments…

The first time I saw this movie I was in the midst of both a nasty cold and a temporary yet somehow still too long tenure working at a theme park ticket booth, so you can imagine my sense of guilt!!!!!

This film is pure stress. Well crafted, but the story would benefit from one less narrative thread - too many characters and locales for such a short runtime. I don’t want to touch any public surfaces ever again.